Chapter 2 #2
I was delirious, drifting like a sun-kissed wave. Myra!
‘Is crime your beat?’
‘No,’ I replied, startled by the question.
I reached for my water bottle and took a swig.
A drop dribbled down my chin. I’m clumsy.
Put your last rupee on me dropping something every day, and you won’t be poorer.
Several times each day actually. As I returned my bottle to its place, I noticed Andrew reaching forward.
I pushed back in my seat, panicking, and wiped the stray droplet with the back of my hand. What was he thinking?
He’d done it every time I drank from a bottle when we were together. Sometimes, he used a tissue, but most often, it was just his hand.
‘I’m in features,’ I said, before correcting myself, ‘heading features. That’s just a column I write.’
‘Your USP.’
I smiled. ‘You’d recognize quite a few of the stories,’ I said, refusing to let this charming little interlude waylay me.
‘Some are big cases from our younger days. I’m trying to track the journey of this city – once a quiet cantonment town, to the bustling metropolis it is today – through its crime scenes. Does that make sense?’
Andrew nodded. ‘It’s not the most innovative idea, revisiting popular crime stories, but I like how you’ve linked it to the city, cultural backdrop, economic growth. It is a secondary character almost.’
I was smiling. Hopefully, in my head only.
‘How did it start?’
It wasn’t fortuitous play.
Days after my mother’s death, I started scouring crime stories, sections in newspapers, segments in the news, and as much of the meta space as I could get to, looking for answers for what I believed was a motivated homicide.
My parents were locked in a heated argument the night before my mother was mowed down. I heard the words ‘loan’ and ‘not cleared’. I had put it down to my dad’s fitful dalliances with funds at the time. He could never get that right.
Though the accident in which I lost my mother was declared a drunken-driving case a few months later, I wasn’t convinced. The file was closed, but my doubts were open wounds.
Drunk at 8.30 a.m.? He would’ve been lying under a couch, dead to the world, not behind a steering wheel.
A couple of years ago, I even took it up with a cop I had befriended on the job. There were no loopholes in the case, no openings to claim doubt.
‘It was clean and clear,’ the policeman had said.
Those were the bare facts.
‘I was looking to give the pages an edge,’ I said. I ignored his question.
Andrew nodded. His eyes were on me.
I exhaled. An anodyne sound escaped my lips.
‘It can’t be a random death…’ Andrew said. He stopped and smiled, letting the shift in mood complete his sentence. No death is random. ‘It has to be a sensational case – one people will bite into.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘there’s something ugly about this profession.’
I was so focused on not stumbling that I hadn’t noticed his gaze had dropped to my collarbone.
My left hand rushed to the rescue of my suitably uncovered clavicle, dislodging the keyboard in the process.
Was that a smile on Andrew’s perfectly sculpted face?
It might’ve been a whole different view he was looking down at had we been on our feet. This civilized posture of being seated on a chair had its merits.
I needed to keep talking, that was my only out.
‘It was a stressful time,’ I said. ‘Digging out details was the toughest part. How did you discover the body? What did you see? Who did you call? What did the message say? The details that are needed. I took a month off after writing those seven pieces. I was exhausted. That bank had busted me. Only when I returned to work did we launch the column.’
‘Are you okay?’ His right hand reached across the table but stopped midway.
‘Some of these guys are psychopaths; they have no remorse. It’s kind of crazy. While there are others who look regular, like you and me, even after 10–15 years in jail. They planned these elaborate murders, which they may have actually got away with if not for a twat here or a turn there.’
When I looked up, I noticed that he was staring at me intently. His eyes were of such a deep hue, they would’ve passed as my coffee. They stirred strange sensations in me.
‘Politics is the hard stuff supposedly, and features are fluff,’ I said, holding his gaze for the first time since he walked into my cabin. ‘Quadrupled whisky to gin and tonic.’
I caught a flicker, a light I hadn’t noticed before. My eyes dropped. It might have just been a shaft from the window behind me.
Andrew’s face crinkled with laughter. ‘You have changed. The fierce Myraah.’
Slayed! He was reading me faster than a graphic novel.
‘We only show the world what we want them to see.’
‘We,’ he repeated after me, tasting the word. There was an intangible sadness to Andrew Brown 2.0, or was that a sagacious air? Something lost, something gained.
Looking at him seated across from me, the visual treat aside, I was glad Morning Herald had invested in real talent rather than technology in their last defence of the physical property.
Whether or not Andrew Brown was capable of leading that fight is a different debate, but I liked the choice my organization had made.
‘More serious, too,’ he said.
We had hardly met, but he had made all the right deductions while I had more unasked questions in my head than words for this piece I was rewriting. I laughed out loud. I had to rebuke myself. Come on!
It doesn’t always have to be a hundred, Myra!
‘Want to come and have a look at my space?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Show me around the office maybe?’
The gall of the man! I was on deadline. I had a story to finish. He walks into the place and thinks he can own my time? What did he think? Only he wrote for the newspaper while the rest of us flipped burgers while we waited to fill the G-strings between advertisements?
‘I would’ve loved to show you around, Andrew, but I am on deadline.’ I lost the laugh; my smile was salty. This was easier. I should try trading insults in the next round.
He nodded quickly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, straightening up to his full height.
‘Don’t be,’ I said, sweetly. ‘It’ll catch up with you, too, Mr Political Editor.’
He laughed again. That slow, rhythmic laugh.